Writing.Com General Discussion

Ultimately, you are not in control of what another person says about your work. You can ask, but that doesn't mean they saw your request or kept it in mind.

Hence, you will get mean reviews. You will get grammar-centric reviews when you asked for development stuff. You will get "everything" when that would be overwhelming and as Zen pointed out, fixing copy-editing before developmental stuff means you'll just make more copy-edit mistakes and probably delete copy-edits you fixed.

It makes sense as the real world of editing does, to focus on developmental feedback first. If you find nothing significant there, then give copy-editing feedback.

But people tend to be better at one or the other of those, guess what they're going to focus on...

So what you're complaining about is something you can't really control, despite all of "us" in the choir knowing what the problem is.

I don't think anybody should be mean in giving a review. And I think they should be mindful of managing how much the give at one time. But a writer HAS to learn how to handle drinking from the firehose and prioritizing what to listen to and focus on.

Because the only thing you can control is you.